My favorite place to be is outdoors, and I mean that in a purposefully vague way. Whether I’m by the beach, hiking, or canoeing through alligator-laden swamps, I’m by far the happiest and most in my element. Heck, the reason I got into the field of climate education was because of how much I love the outdoors. Naturally, one of my favorite days every year is Earth Day—the one day when the rest of the world hops the nature nerd train and comes together to make the world a better, more sustainable place.

And the winner, by universal acclaim, was the story of Inky, the Houdini of octopuses, who escaped his aquarium in New Zealand and found his way back to the ocean. Is it possible that this story was so popular in the U.S. because we all yearn for a way to escape the endless presidential primary season?

My ecology unit started in an unusually urgent manner—with a call to the doctor.

"911, this is an emergency! Let's get some vitals on the patient, stat!" Now we weren't in an emergency room, nor had any student collapsed. Instead, we were in my classroom, my students were the doctors, and the patient was planet Earth. For the next few weeks, my students set out on a journey to take the Earth’s vitals and diagnose our planet’s condition.

This past month I’ve slept terribly and it’s all because of the Big Bang. You see I’ve been lucky enough to collaborate with Brian Kruse over at the Astronomical Society of the Pacific on a teacher workshop about the Big Bang this week (and again at NSTA next month).